THE SUPREME COURT: DETAINEES

THE SUPREME COURT: DETAINEES; ACCESS TO COURTS

By LINDA GREENHOUSE

Published: June 29, 2004

Correction Appended

WASHINGTON, June 28—
Declaring that ''a state of war is not a blank check for the president,'' the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that those deemed enemy combatants by the Bush administration, both in the United States and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, must be given the ability to challenge their detention before a judge or other ''neutral decision-maker.''

Although divided in its rationale, the court was decisive in rejecting the administration's core legal argument that the executive branch has the last word in imposing open-ended detention on citizens and noncitizens alike. The justices' language was occasionally passionate, reflecting their awareness of the historic nature of this confrontation between executive and judicial authority.

Eight justices, all but Justice Clarence Thomas, said the two-year-long detention of an American citizen, Yaser Esam Hamdi, had either been invalid from the beginning or had become so, for constitutional or statutory reasons. The controlling opinion, by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, said that Mr. Hamdi's detention was permissible if designation as an enemy combatant proved to be correct, but that his inability so far to appear before a judge, challenge the government's evidence, and tell his side of the story had deprived him of his constitutional right to due process.

The opinion said that a citizen held as an enemy combatant was entitled to ''notice of the factual basis for his classification'' and a ''fair opportunity to rebut the government's factual assertions before a neutral decision-maker.'' Writing for herself, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer, Justice O'Connor said, ''These essential constitutional promises may not be eroded.'' [Excerpts, Page A16.]

She added that ''we necessarily reject the government's assertion that separation of powers principles mandate a heavily circumscribed role for the courts in such circumstances.'' She said that the administration's position that the courts could not examine individual detainees' cases ''serves only to condense power into a single branch of government.''

Mr. Hamdi, picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan, has sought to contest his designation as an enemy combatant. The federal appeals court that heard his case ruled last year that a nine-paragraph statement filed by a Pentagon official, Michael Mobbs, was a sufficient basis for Mr. Hamdi's continued detention and that no further inquiry into his case was required.

In a second case Monday, concerning the hundreds of noncitizens confined at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, the court ruled 6 to 3 that federal judges have jurisdiction to consider petitions for writs of habeas corpus from detainees who argue that they are being unlawfully held.

The administration's position on the Guantánamo detainees was that under a World War II-era Supreme Court precedent, no federal court had jurisdiction to hear their cases because the base is outside the sovereign territory of the United States. But for a variety of reasons, the precedents the administration relied on did not govern the analysis, Justice John Paul Stevens said for the majority. A main factor was the nature of Guantánamo Bay, ''territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control'' under a 101-year-old lease, Justice Stevens said.

The majority's analysis suggested, in fact, that federal courts might have jurisdiction to hear claims of illegal detention from those held in other foreign locations as well. While Justice Stevens was not explicit on this point, his suggestion was enough to provoke Justice Antonin Scalia to complain in dissent that ''the court boldly extends the scope of the habeas statute to the four corners of the earth.'' Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas joined the dissent.

The Supreme Court also dealt with a third case Monday, that of Jose Padilla, an American citizen picked up at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago on suspicion of planning to detonate a radioactive device. This case ended with what was essentially a nonruling. Mr. Padilla's habeas corpus petition was brought in the wrong court, the Supreme Court said by a 5 to 4 majority. His lawyers said they would act promptly to refile the case, which is now considerably strengthened by the court's analysis in the Hamdi case.

The decisions in the Hamdi and Padilla cases came two months to the day after those cases were argued. Just hours after the arguments concluded on April 28, CBS television broadcast the first images of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

While the Supreme Court cases all involved detentions resulting from the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and had no connection to Iraq, there was much speculation in the intervening weeks about what impact the revelations from Abu Ghraib might have on the court.

Not surprisingly, no justice made a direct reference to those events. But it was difficult to read some of the passages in a vacuum. For example, Justice Stevens, dissenting from the court's refusal to reach the merits of the Padilla case, noted that Mr. Padilla had been held without charges or access to a lawyer for two years, and then said:

Correction: June 30, 2004, Wednesday A front-page article yesterday about the Supreme Court decision affirming the legal rights of citizens and noncitizens who are declared ''enemy combatants'' misstated the location of the federal district court that first ruled in the case of the American detainee Yaser Esam Hamdi. It is in Norfolk, Va.; the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which took the case afterward, is in Richmond.